Bernadette Peters

Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara) is an American actress, singer and dancer. She portrayed Betty Boop on Saturday Night Live Season 7: Episode 6 in 1981, and performed "I Wanna Be Loved By You" in a skit entitled Johnny Keep Your Gun Clean. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two (plus an honorary award), and nine Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards. Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including in the musicals Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, Into the Woods, The Goodbye Girl, Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy. Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenage actress in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. In the 2010s, Peters continues to act on stage, in films and on television in such series as Smash and Mozart in the Jungle. She has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.

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Trivia

In the 1981 film Pennies from Heaven, Bernadette Peters lip-syncs to Helen Kane ("The Original Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl's") song "I Wanna Be Bad".

The voice Peters used when she played Betty Boop live is the same voice she used for Lily St. Regis, Rooster's girlfriend in the 1982 film Annie.

In a People magazine article from 1982, Bernadette Peters voice was compared to Betty Boop.

In a 1982 newspaper interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Bernadette Peters said she enjoyed being compared to Betty Boop and Ruby Keeler and considered herself a modern woman.

Bernadette was also considered for a Betty Boop role in the late 1980s, but according to a 1987 newspaper article the Fleischer Studios decided to go with Cyndi Lauper, neither artist was used in any animated Betty Boop franchise.

Bernadette Peters was to have voiced Betty in Betty Boop (MGM/Zanuck Co.) but, two weeks before voice recording was to begin with Bernadette Peters as Betty, the head of MGM, Alan Ladd, Jr., was replaced by Frank Mancuso, and the project was abandoned. But according to Mary Kay Bergman, she had been offered the role.